ABSTRACT

A cartoon in The New Yorker magazine on 5th July 1993 showed a picture of a dog at a computer talking to his friend and saying:

A significant number of people using the Internet in general and the Web in particular have some form of disability that may affect their use of the technology. Of course the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),1 the main web standards body, is aware of the issues but many sectors still have little awareness of the access problems to their websites. Museums and related cultural institutions normally pride themselves on the accessibility of their physical buildings with expensive lifts, induction loops for audio access, special toilet facilities etc – see in Figure 23.1, for example, the prominent ramp for the River and Rowing Museum at Henley that is

raised well above the ground level which is in the flood plain of the River Thames. It would not be untypical to spend around 10% or more of a building’s overall cost on improved accessibility. This is both a legal requirement in many countries and also a moral duty for public-spirited institutions such as museums. What is more, perhaps around 10% of the population have some sort of physical disability that impairs their activities in some way. However, many heritage institutions have yet to make an equivalent effort for their on-line facilities, despite the fact that legislation covering this mode of access is in the offing or already exists in most developed countries.